The present invention generally relates to wireless communication services, and particularly relates to tracking signal impairment correlations of received communication signals.
RAKE receivers are well known in the communication arts and find widespread use in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, such as in IS-95, IS-2000 (cdma2000), and Wideband CDMA (WCDMA) wireless communication networks. The name derives from the rake-like appearance of such receivers, wherein multiple, parallel receiver fingers are used to receive multiple signal images in a received multipath signal. By coherently combining the finger outputs in a RAKE combiner, the conventional RAKE receiver can use multipath reception to improve the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of the received multipath signal.
However, as is known to those skilled in the art, the conventional RAKE receiver is optimal only in certain limited circumstances. For example, the presence of self-interference and multi-user access interference both degrade the performance of a conventional RAKE receiver. To that end, the assignee of the instant application has made application for one or more patents relating to the use of a “generalized” RAKE receiver architecture, wherein receiver performance is improved by increasing the sophistication of combining weight generation.
Thus, in the generalized RAKE architecture, the combining weight calculations consider correlations of one or more signal impairments across RAKE fingers. For example, a generalized RAKE receiver may track noise correlations across those fingers. Generalized RAKE receivers also may include a comparatively larger number of fingers such that extra fingers may be positioned off of the signal path delays. Indeed, a generalized RAKE receiver can gain performance improvements by shifting these extra fingers to optimize the SNR of the received signal. Correlations of signal impairments can also be used in SNR estimating often referred to as signal to interference ratio (SIR) estimation. SIR estimation is used in power control as well as in monitoring link quality and rate adaptation.
Regardless, by using its knowledge of how selected signal impairments are correlated across fingers, the generalized RAKE receiver can compensate the finger combining weights such that receiver performance is improved. Of course, the need to determine signal impairment correlations with sufficient accuracy and rapidity stands as a primary challenge associated with implementation of the generalized RAKE receiver.